Environmental Monitoring: Models, Methods, and Systems

Environmental monitoring is the continuous, automated observation of changes in the environment. Powerful models, methods, and systems that have been developed for the purpose of environmental monitoring are now leaving the laboratory setting, and some of them are already being applied. When they are applied in countries that have well established environmental authorities and a high population density, these applications are actually additional measures to protect the environment. However, the situation in less developed or less densely populated countries is quite different. For these countries, the new techniques of environmental monitoring can offer totally new opportunities for better environmental protection. 1 Environmental Monitoring and its Global Range 1.1 THE PRESENT SITUATION The global environmental situation of the Earth is becoming increasingly problematic and critical. The outlook for our future is increasingly gloomy. The major reason for this pessimistic outlook is the exploding number of people. Since 1970 the world’s population has risen from 3.5 to 5.5 billion people. At the same time, the consumption per person has risen tremendously in the developed countries [STIF91]. Both trends historically have been regarded as something positive, and they have led to an ever-growing improvement of human living conditions, an effect that individuals can perceive directly. At the same time, the responsible institutions have had greater opportunities to develop and gain power. For these reasons, both the increase in the number of people and the increase in the consumption rates have generally been regarded as favorable. But now we have reached a turning point. Today, more than half of the world’s population is not yet capable of reproduction, which means that a kind of time bomb, of which we will have hardly any control, is developing within the global demographic structure [EHRL75, EHRL91, FAW92]. Furthermore, the consumption rates reached in In: N.M. Avouris, B. Page (eds). Environmental Informatics – Methodology and Applications of Environmental Information Processing, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, 1995.